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Coinbase, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange, brokerage, and wallet based in the US, integrated Ethereum Classic on June 12 ahead of other major cryptocurrencies such as Ripple and EOS.

The community was taken aback by the abrupt decision of Coinbase to add ETC to its platform, given that it is the 18th most valuable cryptocurrency in the global market and there are more than a dozen cryptocurrencies with larger market valuation and volume.

Dan Romero, the vice president and general manager at Coinbase, acknowledged that the cryptocurrency community generally responded to the ETC integration with astonishment. He emphasized that Coinbase’s decision to integrate ETC was mainly fueled by its compliance with local regulations.

“Seeing some head-scratching on this one [ETC integration]. We’ll continue adding as many assets as we can in a secure and compliant manner. Building a brand that’s most trusted and gives customers direct access to cryptocurrency with USD, EUR, GBP requires being compliant with local laws,” Romero explained.

Why Ethereum Classic?

ETC was created after a group of developers hard forked the Ethereum blockchain network, after the Ethereum community came to a consensus to fork the chain to recover the losses of investors in the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), one of the first major decentralized applications on the Ethereum protocol.

Eventually, the development of ETC was split between several development groups and currently, IOHK, the founding team of $4.4 billion blockchain network Cardano created by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, remains as one of the few development teams that oversee the development of Ethereum Classic.

ETC, like Ethereum, is sustained by developers in the open-source development community and the success of ETC does not benefit a single organization. Cryptocurrencies such as Ripple and EOS are overseen by independent and private companies including Ripple Labs and Block.one.

The transparent launch of ETC and the decentralized nature of its development community are what led Coinbase to ultimately integrate ETC ahead of other cryptocurrencies such as XRP and EOS.

Brian Armstrong, the CEO at Coinbase, said that the integration of ETC is only the beginning of new cryptocurrency integration and in the mid-term, the company will continue to add more cryptocurrencies and tokens.

“Excited to continue adding new assets to Coinbase,” Armstrong said. The official announcement of the Coinbase team emphasized that the platform will support the ERC20 standard and bitcoin forks first, before moving to other cryptocurrencies.

“We have previously announced our intention to support the ERC20 technical standard and Bitcoin forks. We will announce the intention to add specific assets within those categories prior to final engineering integration. This is consistent with our public process for adding new assets,” the Coinbase team said.

What Will Come Next?

Tokens will be next on the line, as the Coinbase team emphasized on its latest statement. 0x, which has a Coinbase co-founder as an advisor, will likely be integrated next. But, it is also possible that coinbase integrate the entire ERC20 token standard as a whole, implementing all tokens listed on Paradex, the decentralized cryptocurrency exchange based on the 0x protocol.